I'm part way there. In government buildings, city parks, etc., sure -- take 'em down. State flags incorporating the confederate flag? Yeah. Probably time to change.

Civil war battlefields / memorials? Leave 'em up. Stone Mountain? Leave it. Placards noting that these people fought for the wrong side, for wrong reasons (90% of which boils down to slavery) can / should be included. Make it clear that the efforts of these people to try to keep slavery around were evil and wrong.

I've seen it noted that there are no monuments to Hitler in Germany. True, but reminders of the terrible Nazi legacy remain, in Germany and elsewhere. Concentration camps remain, still standing as a reminder of the human capacity for evil. Nazi flags, logos, and equipment remain in museums.

In China, images and monuments to Mao are everywhere. In spite of the fact that even the Communist Party there admits that his policies and actions were terrible -- the devastating Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc. Some Chinese can remember and celebrate the good that Mao did (perhaps a small list) while simultaneously acknowledging his extremely tarnished legacy.


I think that being very quick to say that ALL people on the Confederate side of the Civil War were evil and wrong while their counterparts in the Union were clearly the "real Americans" is entirely too easy. The CSA was founded almost entirely in support of a very evil primary goal -- to keep slavery around. But the people in it, even the people running it, were different from the people on the other side mainly due to accidents of birth location. They fought for what they thought was necessary / right. They were wrong. But, they were real Americans -- and acknowledging that they could have been wrong in that way reminds us that the potential to end up on the wrong side of history also exists for us.

^drattus,

I don't know what century you were born in, but we have this new fangled thing called "science" which states that you should have evidence for your assertions. If you are going to call a man insane, and label what he says * Lies than you better back it up with more than conjecture. Until the last paragraph I haven't made a SINGLE assertion in this entire thread. Note that the only claim I made, I provided evidence for. All I did was, when confronted with dubious assertions, ask for evidence.

To address xxovercastxx's claim that this isn't science, science is a list of best known methods. Nothing more, nothing less. In physics that means controls, laser measurement, etc. In medicine that means placebos, double blind experiments, etc. In history that means eyewitness testimony, physical evidence, etc.

Barack Obama's birth location is indeed a question of science. Whether he is a socialist or not is a question of science. Whether the US has a very large national debt is a question of science. Whether he said certain things, or passed certain proposals with certain implications is a question of science. These are not matters of faith. If you think otherwise, why did you come here to debate it? Just sit in your room and pray for answers.

^is your birth location a political question? Its okay you believe what you do, but as far as you've shown, its a faith-based conclusion. Believing the birth certificate while not believing the eyewitness testimony isn't science, its faith.

As I stated, I have no political stake in where Obama was born. My only interest is in the truth, and with the current evidence, I cannot come to a conclusion either way.

In the intro to the pdf you posted, it refs a study on human cells which agrees with my assertion about exposure mutation.

Well, that was kind of the point of my referencing that particular study, as the basis for using a study on S. cerevisiae was as a setup to establish a baseline by which to compare mutagenicity, carcinogenic response, and other potential to reactions. It references the human cell exposure (notably, melanoma and osteosarcoma cells) study and a few others specifically because it was indirectly questioning the validity of those results, as they study S. cerevisiae's mutagenesis but also its recombinational repair. If you note in the conclusion, Shimizu et. al. suggest that ELF-MF "LF-MF does not injure the basic genetic system in the same manner as ionizing radiation or chemical carcinogen does". It is because of this that they call for further research on yet-more indirect mechanisms for any effects of MF exposure, and also a call for better exclusion of experimental setup issues ("involvement of eddy currents induced in the culture medium could not be precluded"). In fact, I do believe these issues of experimental procedure are very difficult to deal with - going through similar papers, they are a constant concern, especially when it comes to bacteria. This is ultimately a large issue of expanding all disease-related effects from simple organisms to more complex organisms, as complex organisms - in full, not just isolated cells - will ultimately not respond to such delicate, unintentional and untracked variable changes in experimental environment. This is, again, why epidemiological studies of humans will trump small-scale bacterial studies.

Certainly many of the things we take for granted in our lives are many times more dangerous then HV lines, you will get no argument from me on that. While I do see the tendency by many to fixate on a minor risk while ignoring real risks(terrorism vs car accidents for instance), that does not mean that the proper response should be to discount concerns of risk which are based on unexceptional claims, even if we lack conclusive proof.

I see your point, in that in the face of a great risk, minor risks should not be ignored. However, my argument is that in the face of all adequate studies, all evidence points to an either insignificant or non-existent risk.

Due to the complexity of the systems involved the correlation of leukemia to HV lines (as in the 2005 study from Oxford) is very similar to the correlation of global atmospheric temperature to CO2.

To the specific study (Childhood cancer in relation to distance from high voltage power lines in England and Wales: a case-control study):
This study actually is pretty deep and requires a strong analysis not typically afforded it. Of note in the study, is the fact that they control using the Carstairs deprivation index for socioeconomic status statistically, specifically for affluence vs. risk of childhood leukemia. This needs to be considered with the fact that they're studying an association between distance of home address at birth from high voltage power lines. Do you see the issue in the combination of that control and that effect study? The basic control isn't so easily useable because of the number of confounding variables, including numbers of moves vs. birth location (stress factor), parental employment vs. location, etc. (These are only indirectly related to socioeconomic status as countered by Carstairs index, which uses four indicators: population density, owning a car, low social class, and male unemployment.) Then when you consider, within 200m, the analysis found a relative risk of 1.69 (95% confidence interval 1.13 to 2.53), the result becomes not merely questionable but likely variably confounded, something that the paper notes: "There is no accepted biological mechanism to explain the epidemiological results; indeed, the relation may be due to chance or confounding." and "We have no satisfactory explanation for our results in terms of causation by magnetic fields, and the findings are not supported by convincing laboratory data or any accepted biological mechanism." and "We emphasise again the uncertainty about whether this statistical association represents a causal relation.", which altogether amounts to an immense amount of ass-covering.

It is also worth mentioning that assuming "400-420 cases of childhood leukaemia occurring annually, about five would be associated with high voltage power lines" approximately, and childhood leukemia is a pretty rare disease as it is. The amount of money blown on these types of studies would cover the treatment for these patients many times over. Of course, the issue of extended disease results still needs to be dealt with, but from the standpoint of pragmatism....

Overall my concern is more that the HV lines are an anachronism, just as with CO2 spewing cars and power plants, it is not technologically necessary to put up with these things when we have better option which use less energy, and produce less waste, both in physical and EMF terms. I think arguing that it may be a small risk, but it would be better to do away with the tech even if it were not, is more pragmatic then arguing from a complex, and sometimes conflicting, body of data that we should ignore it.

My argument with this sift specifically lies in epidemiological claims, and I take up the debate because of my interest in the topic and my exposure to the issue. I am arguing against claims of increase in disease incidence as caused by EMF exposure from power lines, cell phone towers, etc., something that has not only not been demonstrated but that, if causally linked, is highly unlikely to matter in any reasonable scale of public life. From a scientific/academic perspective, it's worth researching. From a medical perspective, most likely not. From a public health perspective, almost certainly not. And we're being practical here.

Like I said, I have no experience or anything approaching debate-worthy levels of knowledge on the technological necessity or lack thereof of HV lines, something separate from its possibility of causing diseases. If you would like to sift something about the technology of HV lines and its economic feasibility or some such that I could watch and then read up on, I'd be more than happy to look into it.